There has been considerable buzz lately that the launch and deployment of USA 193 has somehow gone terribly wrong. Reports say that the package failed to deploy properly and it is presently in a rapidly decaying orbit that will bring it back into the atmosphere for an uncontrolled re-entry.
A credible source from our base in Shangrila tells Th’ Gaussling that something will re-enter the atmosphere soon, but it won’t be USA 193. A decaying satellite of some sort is coming down and certain parties are anxious to blast it to pieces. This episode may be just a bit of sleight of hand to confuse intelligence gathering organizations as to what is really up there. A three card Monte, but with rockets.
There may be some real worry about tell-tale bits of apparatus landing in an unfriendly state. There may be worry about fuel vessels landing intact and providing a toxic hazard at the impact site. The (methyl)hydrazine in the fuel cell may be frozen and consequently the fuel cell may not absorb heat fast enough in short re-entry time to flash off and disperse the fuel. Re-entry doesn’t char everything to cinders.
A missile intercept with the satellite may be a preventative measure, an exercise for missileers, a counterintelligence exercise, or it may be a signal to a few frisky states out there who doubt our capability and resolve. Let’s hope we’re spared the embarrassment of a miss.
Lamentations on Chemistry 
If every Inner City schoolchild had a laser pointer and educators told them where to point, the world could be saved. Put FEMA in charge for fast response. (Don’t sniff the diode, kiddies – that’s formaldehyde!)
Sounds like a grass-roots movement.
I’m not sure if certain satellites are run on plutonium for longer life. That would suck. How much vaporized plutonium does it take to give us all lung cancer? Supposedly all doses cause cancer.
Hopefully it’s just the usual pirated alien space craft that’s running low on muon pellets. They biodegrade!
Hi Nick, What is really striking about the situation is that the gov’t wants to demolish this package or at least make sure that it is well fragmented. That is a curious thing. It is expensive and risky in terms of the possibility of failure.
Regarding the plutonium comment, I don’t know if there is any advantage to using Pu for the generation of power in a craft in earth orbit. Photovoltaic power is well understood and has to be cheaper to engineer than a thermal generator using decay heat. Deep space probes use nuclear generators because of the lower solar flux further out in the solar system.
http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/nuclear_space_010625-6.html
I believe that thermoelectric power generation using decay heat involves the use of refractory materials of construction that are likely to contain the radionuclides fairly well in the event of a re-entry. Pu-238 Oxide itself would be a refractory material that would have poor solubility in water and would probably be immobilized in clay soils once it is on the surface. Pu-238 oxide would be quite dificult to volatilize or disperse as an aerosol since it is likely to be a ceramic. The RTG’s use iridium casings with graphite to encase the nuclide. All-in-all, if you have to be near kilo-Curies of plutonium, this would be a relatively safe way to do it. Oh, Pu-238 is non-fissile and has a half life of 87.7 years.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_generator
I am thinking that there is concern about the cryptography module, and those who want to destroy the US 193 want to destroy the routines and also the frequencies used for the satellite communications. After all, if someone could defeat the cryptography they could in principle re-program the other similar satellites, a get their own spy satellite by stealing one. If that happened the USA would probably deny that happened–just like when the Russians were too embarrassed that US SR71’s were overflying their country, so neither side publicly acknowledged those overflights.
There’s also the off chance that there is some other technology–fancy ground penetrating radar is at the top of my list.
It will be interesting to see what happens.
How very interesting. Thanks for that insight. The basis of this post is more mysterious than I prefer to put on the web. But I was intrigued by the amount of subterfuge that aerospace people (especially scientists) consider “normal” in their field. Something in a stable orbit should have a long orbital lifetime. Something in an excessively eccentric orbit will not. That a freshly launched package failed to achieve a stable orbit and is coming down seems reasonable. The assertion that something else is coming down instead seems less likely. But this little tidbit fell in my lap and I couldn’t resist.